I'm making beer at my house in Durham.

Pale Ale Recipe

2009-01-28T16:14:00.000-08:00

This recipe is pretty good. It's a basic pale ale. No frills, nice hop flavor & aroma, but not overpowering. Pretty easy to drink.

Pale Ale

8# Muntons Pale malt (Pearl)

1# Weyermann Vienna 2-row barley malt

.5 oz. U.K. Phoenix hops (a = 10.0%) - 60 minutes, bittering boil

.625 oz. U.K. Phoenix hops (a = 10.0%) - 30 minutes, bittering boil

1 oz. Willamette hops (a = 5.1%) - 0 minutes, dry-hop

.5 t Irish moss - 10 minutes, boil

American Ale & Belgian Saison Yeast

Original Gravity: 1.0548714(adjusted to 60ºF)

Terminal Gravity: 1.0134653 (adjusted to 60ºF)

Alcohol by Weight: 4.37446%

Alcohol by Volume: 5.58359%

Alcohol by Volume after topping to 5 gal: 5.02523%

Method:

Day 0 (13 DEC 2008)

Add 11 qts of 138ºF water to the crushed grain. Stir, stabilize and hold at 130ºF for 30 minutes. Add 6-8 qts boiling water to bring to 150ºF. Stabilize and hold at 150-154ºF for 60 minutes.

After conversion, raise temperature to 167ºF. Sparge with 170ºF water to collect up to 6 gallons of wort. Bring to boil.

Add hops and Irish moss according to schedule above.

Activate yeast. Quickly cool wort to 65-70ºF, top up with water if necessary, aerate and transfer to fermenter. Ferment 7 days.

S.G.: 1.0548714 (adjusted to 60ºF)

Day 7 (21 DEC 2008)

Rack beer to sanitized fermenter; take s.g. reading.

S.G.: 1.011

Temp: 67ºF

S.G.: 1.0118714 (adjusted to 60ºF)

Clarify and additional 1-2 weeks.

Day 13 (27 DEC 2008)

Rack beer to sanitized keg; take s.g. reading.

S.G.: 1.013

Temp: 63ºF

S.G.: 1.0134653 (adjusted to 60ºF)

Top up to 5 gallons. Siphon to keg. Tap immediately.

NOTES:

Good stuff. After a few days under pressure, really tasty. Nothing special, just a solid, slightly hoppy, pale ale.

Strawberry Pilsner Homebrew Recipe

2009-01-27T15:03:00.000-08:00

So I've discovered that I can't post files on here unless I host the whole thing on a different server. That's definitely not gonna happen because that's more money I could spend on brewing equipment. In any case, I guess I'll just post text versions of recipes, and if anyone wants spreadsheets or whatever, email me and I'll send it to you. Sorry if the formatting isn't the best. I'll work on it. (That was probably a lie.)

Here's the goods. This is one of the most recent beers I've made. It's tremendous (if you like strawberries). It's hoppy and has a strong strawberry aroma, but very little strawberry taste, just a slight strawberry aftertaste. It has a lot of mouthfeel if you're into that sort of thing. It's probably pretty self-evident, but in case you can't figure it out on your own: women LOVE this beer. You should make some.

Strawberry Pilsner

8# Weyermann Pilsner 2-row barley malt (Lov. 1.3)

1# Weyermann Carahell 2-row barley malt (Lov. 9-13)

1# fresh strawberries

.5 oz. U.K. Phoenix hops (a = 10%) - 60 minutes, bittering boil

.5 oz. U.K. Phoenix hops (a = 10%) - 30 minutes, bittering boil

1 oz. Willamette hops (a = 5.1%) - 0 minutes, dry-hop (in hot wort)

.5 t Irish moss - 10 minutes, boil

American Ale Yeast

Original Gravity: 1.0474653 (adjusted to 60ºF)

Terminal Gravity: 1.01046534 (adjusted to 60ºF)

Alcohol by Weight: 3.86917%

Alcohol by Volume: 4.92401%

Alcohol by Volume after topping to 5 gal: 4.43161%

Method:

Day 0 (21 DEC 2008)

Add 11 qts of 138ºF water to the crushed grain. Stir, stabilize and hold at 130ºF for 30 minutes. Add 6-8 qts boiling water to bring to 150ºF. Stabilize and hold at 150-154ºF for 60 minutes.

After conversion, raise temperature to 167ºF. Sparge with 168ºF water to collect up to 6 gallons of wort. Bring to boil.

Crush strawberries and set aside. Add hops and Irish moss according to schedule above.

Activate ale yeast. Quickly cool wort to 65-70ºF; when it reaches 150ºF, add crushed strawberries; top up with water if necessary; aerate and transfer to fermenter. Ferment 7 days.

S.G.: 1.0474653 (adjusted to 60ºF)

Day 7 (27 DEC 2008)

Rack beer to sanitized fermenter; take s.g. reading.

S.G.: 1.010

Temp: 63ºF

S.G.: 1.01046534 (adjusted to 60ºF)

Clarify an additional 1-2 weeks.

Day 13 (2 JAN 2009)

Rack beer to sanitized keg; take s.g. reading.

S.G.:

Temp:

S.G.: (adjusted to 60ºF)

Top up to 5 gallons. Boil 2.5 oz. corn sugar together with 1 cup water and add to beer. Siphon to keg. Condition at least 2 weeks

I have blog now. It will be about all the beer I make.

2009-01-26T16:17:00.000-08:00

I'm mostly going to post about homebrewing. I like all-grain brewing, so that's what I do. Most of the recipes I steal from other people and then change. Probably 50% of the beers I have ever made were disgusting. That's mostly due to an ill-advised decision to start making up recipes very early in the learning process. I'm getting better now, though, and lately they've all been pretty good.

I try to brew once a week; however, I have a super hurting setup, so it takes me like 5 or 6 hours to do a five gallon batch. I don't mind so much, but sometimes my girlfriend wants to hang out with me on weekends (because she loves me), so I can't make beer every weekend. No biggie though.

I'll probably post all the recipes I've ever made along with all the really insightful notes I've taken because, you know, the internet is free, right? I've started using Apple's spreadsheet software (it's called Numbers, which is a stupid name) to do my recipes because I like it. If anyone ever reads this blog and wants to open one of the Numbers files, but they don't have a Mac, then that will be too bad. They could probably email me though, and I'll send them something in Excel or Fortran or whatever they like (probably not Fortran though).

I'll put some pictures up one day too.

-Sudsy McDrinkin'